1. Field of the Inventions
The present inventions relate shift operating apparatuses for transmissions, such as shift devices adapted to be moved through a parking preparatory condition during the course of shift between a parking position and other shift positions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Gear shifters for automatic transmission of vehicles, such as automobiles etc. usually allow a user to arbitrarily shift gears of an automatic transmission of a vehicle between park, neutral, and the forward and reverse gears. Such shifters typically comprise a shift operating device (e.g., a knob or a lever), arbitrarily movable between the parking position and other gear positions different from the parking position and a park position detecting device for detecting when the shift operating device is in the park position. In these systems, the shift operating device is adapted to be moved through a parking preparatory condition during the course of a shift between the park position and other gear positions.
The parking preparatory condition or position is a condition defined between the park position and the other positions (i.e. a condition other than the parking position, neutral, and the forward and reverse gear positions) for preventing the shift operating device from being abruptly or directly moved, for example, by an erroneous operation, from the parking position to another gear position, or reversely, from a gear position to the park position. In recent years, although the shift operating apparatuses for automatic transmissions provided with the parking position detecting means for detecting the shift operating means being in the parking position has been widely spread in view of safety, the parking position detecting means does not detect when a shift operating device is in the parking preparatory condition.
One example of automatic transmission the shift operating apparatus of the prior art summarized above is disclosed in Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2000-62491. The shift operating mechanism in this publication includes a dial-type operating knob (FIG. 1) which is adapted to be arbitrarily operated by a driver. The knob can be gripped, pressed axially inwardly, then rotated so as to be moved between any of the arbitrary shift positions (forward, neutral and reverse gears) and the park position by passing through the parking preparatory condition. More specifically, the parking preparatory condition of this type of shift operating device is a pushed-down or pushed-in operated position.